‘Syrian Village Speaks Tongue Used by Jesus’
The reporter of your story (Dec. 24), “Syrian Village Speaks Tongue Used by Jesus,” could have heard the sounds of the Aramaic language right here in Los Angeles.
I vividly remember a conversation conducted partly in Aramaic in my own home between a Maronite priest and an Orthodox rabbi. The occasion was a meeting of the Los Angeles Rabbi-Priest Dialogue, which was initiated by Cardinal Timothy Manning 16 years ago and which continues to this day. The two clergymen compared the use of the Aramaic language in the Talmud, the major repository of the Jewish tradition, and in the liturgy of the Maronite Church, a major Mideastern division of Roman Catholicism.
ALFRED WOLF
Los Angeles
Rabbi Wolf is director of the Skirball Institute on American Values of the American Jewish Committee.
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